Efficient Broadcasting in Delay Tolerant Networks

Delay tolerant networks are a class of networks characterized by intermittent connectivity, long delays, and noncontemporaneous end-to-end paths between nodes. Standard Internet protocols do not fare well in these situations and special protocols have been developed to handle routing, broadcasting and other mechanisms for transporting data. In this paper, we discuss a mechanism for energy efficient broadcast - the k-neighbor broadcast scheme. Nodes do not broadcast all the time, but wait for an opportunity to reach multiple nodes with one transmission, thereby reducing the number of transmissions overall. We performed a simulation based study and found our scheme performs efficiently in a predictable manner.